Missions Of Most Importance
by donutsweeper
Summary: Annie gets a call from Auggie at three in the morning asking for her help.


The phone rang twice before waking Annie enough to make a groggy attempt at flailing in its general direction in hopes of getting it to shut up, but by the third ring her brain had kicked into gear and she jerked up and grabbed it off the night table.

Flicking it open she shouted, "Walker" before it was even at her ear.

"...Annie?" The fact it was Auggie calling her at, she checked her clock quickly, 3:17 in the morning was not unexpected, but the fact that he sounded hurt and confused _was._

"Auggie? What's wrong?"

"Annie?" His voice was even softer now and slightly distorted, like he was covering the phone maybe?

"Auggie, what's wrong? Talk to me." Kicking the covers off she quickly got to her feet and began pulling out clothes. Something was wrong and she needed to be prepared when she found out what.

"Annie, I don't. I don't. I can't-" He broke off with a desperate, breathless, noise. It was not a noise that Annie had ever heard from Auggie and it cut her to the quick.

Already having changed into pants and an old tee shirt, she quickly shoved her feet into sneakers as she grabbed her keys, jacket, weapon, and spare cell phone. "I'll come get you. You need to tell me where you are," she said, keying in the number for tech ops into the other phone. She'd never been so thankful she'd memorized it.

"I don't know. I. They grabbed me. Two men. Big. I took them out, but took a couple of good hits before I could get away. Annie. Annie, I don't know where I am."

"It's okay." She locked the door and headed to her car, the other phone pressed to her ear as she waited for someone to answer. "Auggie, are you on your phone? I'm calling tech ops, I can have them trace it."

"No. No, it's not mine. My phone. It got smashed in the fight. I have the pieces but it's dead. I found a landline of all things."

Someone _finally_ picked up over at tech ops and Annie juggled opening the car door with a phone pressed to either ear.

"Auggie, hold on. I've gotten through to them and I'm going to put them on speaker. We'll find you, just stay on the line and don't you dare hang up."

She switched the spare phone to speaker phone and dropped it on the seat next to her as she started up the car. "This is Annie Walker," she said into the spare phone without waiting for any sort of greeting from the other end, "I need you to run a trace for me. I've got a wounded operative on the line and I need you to backtrack to discover his location."

"Oh, hey Annie." It was Barber who'd answered. That was good, mostly. She knew him and he knew her and he seemed to mostly know what he was doing. Mostly. "A backtrace on your usual cell? I can do that. Just give me a sec..." he trailed off and she could hear him typing away furiously as he munched on chips or something that was loud and crunchy. Auggie was going to kill him if he got crumbs everywhere.

Pulling out of the driveway she headed in the general direction of Langley, mostly because going somewhere was better than sitting there and doing nothing. "Still there, Auggie?" she asked softly.

There was a choked off huff from the phone. "W-Where else would I be?" he joked.

Neither stated the obvious, that he could have passed out or been recaptured or had to flee or any of the numerous other things that could have happened in the few moments since he'd spoken last.

"Ah!" Barber shouted triumphantly. "Got it. Want me to feed the coordinates to your GPS?"

"Can you do that? That would be great, thanks. Seriously, Barber, thank you. I won't forget this." She ended the call without waiting for his response.

Taking a quick look at the GPS she altered course, making a hard right. "Auggie? Barber tracked down your location. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Barber?' he asked weakly. "Guess all that time I spent training him paid off."

"It did. It definitely did." The roads were fairly clear, the one good thing about it being 3 a.m., so she stepped on the gas a little. Too far over the speed limit would attract attention, but a little over should be fine. "Auggie, should I call for back up? Or what about an ambulance? Are you hurt?"

"No. It's. I think I took them out. I haven't heard anything, but it might not be safe." He was beginning to slur his words slightly, which worried Annie more than she'd like to admit.

"Okay. It's fine, I'm on my way. I'm coming for you, Auggie." Breaking just enough to avoid collisions, she followed the GPS' directions down a set of narrow side streets. "I'm almost there. Another five minutes, tops. Auggie? Auggie?"

"'M tired, Walker."

He was slurring his words _and _admitting to be tired? That was not good. Not good on so very many levels. "Less than a block away now, Auggie. Just hold on, okay? I'll be there before you know it."

By the time she pulled to the curb outside of a boarded up office building, Auggie had gone quiet. The street was empty, abandoned looking, but she had spotted a van parked in the alley so she knew looks could be deceiving. Upon examination, the van was empty and its motor cold, but there were a few drops of blood on the back bumper. Most likely it had been the vehicle used to transport Auggie. She chose to take the fact that there was so little blood as a good sign.

The building to the right of the van looked undisturbed, but the one on the left had scuff marks on its steps. Looking closer, she saw the door had been pried open and then hastily shut. "Auggie?" she whispered into the phone, "I'm going to put my phone in my pocket now. I'm about to enter the building at the coordinates Barber gave me. Hold tight."

Pushing the door open slowly she immediately spotted the first of Auggie's captors lying dead in the hallway just to the left of a flight of stairs. It looked like the railing had broken and he had broken his neck when he fell. She didn't recognize him and a quick check provided no identification. Professionals, most likely then.

Following the path of the fighting, she went up the stairs and came to a large storage room and another body. This one was also dead, having crashed through a table and taken one of its broken legs through the chest. He also had no identification. She pulled out the phone "Auggie?" she whispered. "There's two dead out here. Is that all of them?"

She waited, straining to hear a response, and began searching for places Auggie might have hid where he'd have had access to a phone. The set of cubicles seemed the likeliest and in the third one she found him, curled under the abandoned desk, the phone still clutched in his hand. He was cool to the touch, but began to stir when she took his pulse. "It's okay, it's me. It's Annie." The right side of his face was covered with blood, trailing from a wound on his scalp that was still bleeding sluggishly.

"Annie?"

"I'm right here, I've got you. Everything's going to be okay." She began running her hands over him, checking for injuries, eliciting a hiss when she touched his ribs. "Let's get you out of there. I'm going to call a team to take care of the guys who tried to grab you and process the scene and the van, then I'll take you to the hospital."

"No hospital."

"Auggie, you scared me half to death. I am taking you to the hospital whether you like it or not, do you hear me?"

"Mmm," Auggie grumbled. "So bossy."

"You know it," she said with a laugh as she helped maneuver him out and lie down on the carpet.

"Thanks. For coming. Finding me."

"Like there was ever any doubt," she replied, pushing the hair off his face as she called it in.


End file.
